


Other Places

by FracturedSpine



Category: Call of Duty (Video Games)
Genre: Based on Harold Pinter, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, PTSD, Shell Shock, Sleeping Sickness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 16:35:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19255015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FracturedSpine/pseuds/FracturedSpine
Summary: Based on the play "A Kind of Alaska" by Harold Pinter. Edward Richtofen awakes after having a breakdown during the First World War which had left him in a kind of coma for nearly thirty years. Tank is there to comfort him.





	Other Places

“Hello?” The voice echoed in the room. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.  
It was white.  
“Can you hear me?” He blinked, trying to get rid of the black spots that dotted his vision. He paid the voice no notice and instead focused on his breathing. The room felt warm.  
“Do you know who I am?” The voice was beginning to irritate him. It was American. Of course he didn’t know who he was, he had never met an American in his life. He ignored it.  
But with a mounting panic he realised that he was not where he knew himself to be. The room was white, completely white. He lay upon a steel bed that was covered in white sheets. The man before him sat on a cheap pine chair, he wore a white coat and held a white clipboard.  
This was not France.  
There was no mud, no gun or shell fire. There was no smoke, no screaming or shouting.  
This was not war.  
It was too quiet.  
“Am I dead?” He spoke. His voice felt hoarse and rough. He swallowed, but his mouth remained dry.  
The man before him paused.  
“No.” He replied, meeting his gaze. He didn’t like it, it was no way welcoming, he felt as if he was being scrutinised. He shifted.  
“Do you know who you are?” He sneered at him. Why would he not know who he was?  
“My name is Edward Richtofen. I’m with the 14th infantry division. We were to push forwards tonight. I speak German… I am German. Captain Müller wanted to-”  
“I want you to listen to me.” The man in the white coat interrupted. “You have been asleep for a very long time. You have now woken up. We are here to care for you.”  
He paused and deciding whether the man before him was telling the truth. Something felt wrong. He frantically glanced around the room.  
“You have been asleep.” The man repeated. “You have awoken. Do you understand me?” He looked up at him.  
“Asleep?” The word sounds foreign to him. “I haven’t been asleep.” He snapped. The man in the chair tried to give a comforting smile, but it suggested an air of worry.  
He paused again.  
“How old are you?”  
The question was simple enough, but yet Edward seemed to struggle with it.  
“Eighteen, no twenty, no twenty one. Yes, twenty one.” He concluded and then, “why did you bring me here?”  
The man’s gaze returned to his clipboard and he began writing something down.  
“I didn’t bring you here, A man did. A man by the name of Dempsey did.”  
“I don’t know a Dempsey.” Edward uttered, he was beginning to think that the man before him was an idiot.  
He continued to write on his clipboard.  
“Why am I here?” He continued to stare at the man, but he was too focused on the board he held. “The war… we were going over tonight. They need me.”  
“The war’s over.” He said simply.  
“I was in France yesterday!” Edward protested. “I was with Neumann and Köhler and Fuchs. We were getting ready, checking munitions and cleaning the rifles. Fuchs had been hunting rats down the duckboards. Where am I? I wasn’t injured was I? Hit my head and forgot everything? Is this a hospital?”  
“So to speak.” He gave that smile again, the smile that wasn’t really a smile, but he tried anyway. Edward continued, trying to reassure the man before him that he was right and that this man was wrong.  
“You should have seen Köhler’s face when Fuchs brought back the biggest rat he had ever seen. He screamed like a girl.”  
“You’ve been asleep.” The man repeated.  
“Yes, you keep telling me that! What of it?” He scowled, the man finally looked up at him.  
“You have been asleep for a very long time.”  
“How long?” Edward didn’t like this. He felt as though he was playing a game of poker, but the man in front of him held all the cards. He was missing something and he didn’t know what.  
“Twentynine years.” He answered.  
“It doesn’t feel like twenty nine years.” Edward stated, the man’s reply not really registering with him. “You say the war’s over. Did we win?”  
The man shook his head, suddenly aware that these kinds of questions might pose problems.  
“What happened to the 14th?”  
“They’re all dead.” The man said matter-of-factly. Edward nodded to himself, but did not trust him. He was lying. He was fine.  
“Was there another war?” He asked intrigued, if they had lost there would be another war. There always was.  
“No.” The man lied.  
Edward paused.  
“What have I been doing?” The man in white seemed somewhat confused by the question.  
“We don’t know what you have been doing?” He replied in a way that suggested that he himself should know the answer, not the other way around.  
“We?”  
“Dempsey. He has been looking after you.”  
“I told you I don’t know a Dempsey.” Edward sighed, lying back on his bed. Giving up reason. “Am I in prison? It feels like a prison, only I can’t recall what crime I have committed. Everything is so white.”  
The man lowered his clipboard and placed in on his lap.  
“This is not a prison, you have committed no offence.” Edward’s brow furrowed.  
“But surely I must have, then why else am I here?”  
The man stood up and began to pace around the room. Edward sat up, sitting at the edge of the bed to better face the man.  
“You remember nothing? Nothing of where you have been, all that has happened to you?” He stopped and changed tact. “Do you remember your dreams?”  
Edward paused and looked at his hands.  
“I am a doctor.” He replied simply. The other man smiled, slightly amused.  
“A doctor of what?”  
“Science.”  
He had sat down again, thinking he had finally made progress.  
“And what is it you do, Doctor Richtofen?” His tone was that of an adult speaking to a child, but Edward paid it no notice. He was lost again. He froze, his mouth open. Images flooded his mind of his experiments. But he didn’t know what they were for. He looked at his hands, and for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, they weren’t covered in blood.  
“Hurt people. They want me to hurt people.” Edward began to feel sick.  
“Who is ‘they’?” The man tentatively reached for his clipboard, now worried about the man before him, worried that he may now be dangerous.  
“The voices.”  
“In your head?” He asked slowly, moving cautiously as if he was being hunted.  
“Yes.”  
“And how do you hurt them?” The man didn’t want to ask this question, but he would have to see if it had any links with the war.  
Edward was panicking now, his breathing becoming irregular.  
“Cut… them…” He gripped the edge of the bed tightly, his knuckles glowing white.  
“I need you to be calm.” The man insisted and Edward looked up at him, pleading. “Do you hear them now, the voices?”  
He had slowed his breathing. He stared out of the window. It looked as if it might rain.  
“No.”  
“I think you should rest.” The man said as he stood up, ready to leave.  
“But I am not tired.” He continued to look out of the window. “What happened to me?”  
“You stopped.” The man edged ever closer to the door.  
“Stopped what?” Edward still hadn’t noticed that the man was trying to leave.  
“Living. You froze, the night you were supposed to go over. I woke you up with an injection. Mr Dempsey saved your life.”  
The man had opened the door, behind it stood another man who seemed rather eager to enter the room. Edward watched in the corner of his eye as both men crept into the room. The man in the white coat whispered something to the new man.  
“I recognise you from my dreams. Your name is Tank.” He uttered, he was no longer looking out of the window.  
“Yes.” Tank nodded, thankful. He had cared for this man, watched over him for so long now. He had dreamt of the day he would wake and what he would say to him. Truthfully, somewhere at the back of his mind he held doubt, doubt that he would never recover and he would stay asleep forever. His first words were not what he expected.  
“I hurt you.” Tank felt his heart sink. He had no notion of where the idea had come from, was it the war or an unconscious thought? The man had said he had dreamt it.  
“No.” Tank approached him, he crouched down before him. His voice was stern as if lecturing him, scolding him to remove the thought from his head.  
“I hurt you. You told me to stop, but I continued. I hurt you. I hurt you!” He protested, his voice and desperation rising. He flinched backwards. Yes, this was a prison. He had hurt so many people and he would be punished. These men before him were here to punish him.  
“Edward no. You’ve never hurt me.” He waited for the man to calm himself before continuing. “I found you in France, alone, in the middle of No Man’s Land, just stood there. I thought you were dead and that you’d died standing up. I went over to you, but found you were still alive, just frozen, like you’d turned to stone. I took you back to our camp where they took you to the hospital. You have been here for nearly three decades.”  
He could see it in Edward’s eyes, a fear. He was lost and confused. He didn’t understand. It would take time.  
“I want to go back to Germany.” Edward protested. Tank sat down next to him on the bed. The man in the white coat glared at him.  
“Of course. We will take you home.” He reached out and held the German’s hand, an attempt to reassure him that everything was alright.  
“I’ve missed home, my sister, she’s eighteen you know, finally an adult, but she acted like one since she was seven. And my dog. I missed her so much. War is no place for animals, it’s cruel and… go away!” Tank immediately released his hand and stood up. The man in the white coat pulled Tank away. Edward clutched his head and leant back against the wall.  
“I said go away!” The two men flinched, unsure if his outburst was directed at them.  
“No, shut up, shut up, shut up!” And then they realised. Tank frowned. He knew it would not be easy, he had expected such, to try and help a person adapt after simply losing thirty years of their life. But he didn’t expect this.  
“I need you to be calm, the voices are not real.” The man protested, pushing Tank towards the door, but he didn't want to leave. Not now.  
Edward gave a pained laugh, before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.  
“I have been asleep for twenty nine years and you,” he began, pointing to Dempsey, “brought me here. The voices told me to hurt you, even though I don’t want to. The war is over, Müller, Neumann, Köhler and Fuchs are all dead and I will be going back to Germany. I think I’ve got in now. Thank you.”


End file.
